Parse SWIFT MT Activity

You can use the Parse SWIFT MT activity to validate the MT message and parse it to XML format.

General

On the General tab, you can specify a message schema and select multiple validation types to parse and validate an MT message.

The following table lists the configurations on the General tab of the Parse SWIFT MT activity:

Field Module Property? Visual Diff? Description
Name No Yes Specify the name to be displayed as the label for the activity in the process.
SWIFT Specification Yes Yes Click to select a Load SWIFT MT Schema shared resource.

If no matching Load SWIFT MT Schema shared resource is found, click Create Shared Resource to create one. For more details, see Creating a Load SWIFT MT Schema Shared Resource .

SWIFT Message Schema No Yes Click to select a message type schema which you want to configure for the activity.
Select All Validations No Yes Select this checkbox to enable all the validations.
Validate Message Structure No Yes Select this checkbox to validate the SWIFT message structure.

See Guidelines for Validating the Message Structure for more information.

Validate Field Format No Yes Select this checkbox to validate the SWIFT message format. This format specification includes character set membership, mandatory subfield presence, fixed and maximum length subfield enforcement, and multiple line subfield line count enforcement. All SWIFT text and header fields must follow their format specifications exactly.
Note: Certain field format errors are considered parse errors and they occur even when this validation feature is disabled.

For example, the format of the field 20C of an MT 500 is 4!c//16x , which means the string must be as follows:

  • 4 alphabetic characters fixed length
  • double forward slash (//)
  • not more than 16 characters which belong to the X S.W.I.F.T. character set

Validate Data Types No Yes Select this checkbox to validate the SWIFT message data type. SWIFT header and text subfields, such as message types, currency codes, amounts, data, and times are all validated for correct format. The syntactic BIC and LTA validations are part of this feature. Validation against the BIC database requires the use of the Validate BIC/BEI field.
Validate Qualifier Code Words No Yes Select this checkbox to validate the qualifier code word. SWIFT code words are various qualifier-dependent values used in various text subfields. The SWIFT network is currently in a transition for code word validation, and not all customers might want to validate code words.
Validate BIC/BEI No Yes Select this checkbox to validate the SWIFT message BIC/BEI codes against a BIC directory. SWIFT BIC and BEI codes are entity identifiers that are displayed in various subfields of the text block. Validating them takes a lot of time and memory, because data must be searched in a very large database.

At the initialization, an FI.dat BIC directory is provided to the validator, and then full BIC/BEI validation is performed against the provided directory. If no BIC directory is provided, the plug-in uses the default BIC file.

Note:
  • Use the latest BIC file provided by SWIFT for up-to-date BIC or BEI validation.
  • An FI.dat BIC directory is provided by the plug-in as the default BIC file, but you can also provide the most recent BIC file from Swift to overwrite the default file in validation.

Validate Field-Level Semantics No Yes Select this checkbox to validate the SWIFT text blocks field-level semantic. Field-level rules are SWIFT network validation rules that relate data in the subfields of a single field. Examples include "field 22H must have one of subfield Narrative, or Amount, but not both".
Note: This validation is not performed for SWIFT-to-user system messages even if this feature is enabled. This situation happens because these messages are always from SWIFT, and they are assumed to be valid.
Validate Message-Level Semantics No Yes Select this checkbox to enable message-level semantic validation of SWIFT text blocks. Message-level rules are SWIFT network validation rules that relate data in different parts of a message. For example,"if field 22H in sequence A has value X, then field 98A in sequence B must be present".

These rules are complex and slow the validation process. Furthermore, customers frequently enforce these rules downstream of the validator in their own business logic, so it is not always necessary to enable this sort of validation.

Note: This validation is not performed for SWIFT-to-user system messages even if this feature is enabled. This situation happens because these messages are always from SWIFT, and they are assumed to be valid.

Validate Structured Narrative No Yes Select this checkbox to validate the structure narrative of SWIFT message headers. Various SWIFT narrative tags, for example, 71B and 72 are required structures in various messages. The structure typically consists of keywords, continuation characters, or both, occasionally in a particular order.
Validate Advanced Header No Yes Select this checkbox to enable advanced validation of SWIFT message headers. Such validation includes:
  • Enforcing the order of tags in the user header section
  • Enforcing the order of tags in the trailer section
  • Enforcing relationships between delivery options, message types, and obsolescence periods in the application header
BIC Code File(FI.dat) Yes Yes Click and navigate to the location of the BIC or BICPlus file. Select the file and click Open to load it.
Note:
  • The BIC or BICPlus file is extremely large and, if specified, causes the increase of plug-in startup time. If this file is not specified, the default FI.dat file is used.
  • An FI.dat BIC directory is provided by the plugin as the default BIC file, but you can also provide the most recent BIC file from Swift to overwrite the default file in validation.
ISO3166 Country Code File(CT.dat) Yes Yes Click to navigate to the location of the country code data file. Select the file and click Open to load it.
Note: The ISO3166 country codes are used if the file is specified here. Otherwise, an internal database of country codes is used.
ISO4217 Currency Code File(CU.dat) Yes Yes Click to navigate to the location of the currency code data file. Select the file and click Open to load it.
Note: The ISO4217 currency codes are used if the file is specified here. Otherwise an internal database of currency codes is used.
Validation Filter File(ValidationFilter.xml) Yes Yes Click to navigate to the location of the ValidationFilter.xml file. Select the file and click Open to load it.

See Using Validation Filters for more information about the validation filters feature.

Description

On the Description tab, you can enter a short description for the Parse SWIFT MT activity.

Input

The following table lists the input element on the Input tab of the Parse SWIFT MT activity:

Input Item Data Type Description
FINMessage String MT message in String format.

Output

On the Output tab, you can find the parse results.

The following table lists the output element on the Output tab of the Parse SWIFT MT activity:

Output Item Data Type Description
SWIFTMessage XML XML representation of the input MT message.

The contents of the schema are determined by the SWIFT Message schema specified in the General tab.

Fault

On the Fault tab, you can find the error code and error message of the Parse SWIFT MT activity. See Error Codes for more detailed explanation of errors.

The following table lists the error schema elements on the Fault tab of the Parse SWIFT MT activity:

Error Schema Element Data Type Description
ValidationException String The MT messages have validation errors when the validation does not follow the selected SWIFT specification.
SwiftException String The activity cannot locate the metadata directory or it fails to initialize the metadata.